1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to an electronic exchange for providing integrated solutions, and more particularly relates to a dynamic system for matching complex customer requirements with provider solutions.
2. Related Art
As business and technical systems become more and more complex, providing automated solutions for such systems has likewise become increasingly complex. For example, the automation of a complicated business system may require the integration of multiple IT (information technology) products and/or services from multiple IT vendors. A preliminary step of providing such a solution involves defining the system requirements (e.g., a networked-based accounting system for a worldwide manufacturing company that provide accounts payable, accounts receivable, reporting, etc.). Next, a solution must be designed with various solution components necessary to meet the system requirements, i.e., sets of products, their interactions, associated services, etc., which together will form an integrated solution. An additional aspect of providing such a solution involves identifying and interfacing with component suppliers, who can supply the identified solution components.
Typically, a single “solution provider” does not have the capability of supplying all of the solution components necessary to build a complex system. Accordingly, solution providers have the challenge of matching the best components of their company and their business partners to a customer's system requirements. The identification of the optimum set of components for a solution is complex. A large solution provider may offer hundreds of products and a variety of services. In addition, the provider may have thousands of business partners, with each partner capable of supplying various products and/or services. Within this environment, the selection of a set of products and services for a solution is both human intensive and time consuming. Thus, the products selected may not necessarily form the best solution, be available by the preferred supplier, or be priced at the best cost for the customer.
Existing systems for automating the implementation of an integrated solution fail to provide a comprehensive platform that addresses the above-mentioned issues. Namely, no single system exists that can facilitate the identification of products and services that are potential candidates for satisfying system requirements, and provide an interface to seamlessly interact with suppliers to both determine which candidates, among the set of candidates, would best fit the solution to be built, and to obtain the components required for the building of the solution.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,131,087, “Method for Automatically Identifying, Matching, and Near Matching Buyers and Sellers In Electronic Market Transactions,” issued to Luke et al. on Oct. 10, 2000, which is hereby incorporated by reference, teaches a computerized method for identifying and matching offer data with solicitation data (i.e., an e-market or exchange). Unfortunately, such existing e-markets fail to address, among other things, an integrated system that also facilitates the designing of a solution, i.e., matching solution components to a set of customer requirements. Accordingly, a need exists for providing a comprehensive platform that can integrate both the process of designing a solution and the process of identifying and interfacing with suppliers of the components that will make up the solution.